Services This Week
Dear All,
Services this week are taking place in person or via livestream through our YouTube Channel. Please find gathering times and service sheet links below. (Note that there will NOT be a 9am BCP service of Holy Communion this coming Sunday.)
Friday 6 December
10.30am - BCP Holy Communion (Revd Dr Matthias Grebe)
Sunday 8 December / Second Sunday of Advent
11am - Holy Communion
Sermon: ‘As It Is Written in Isaiah the Prophet’
Service Sheet: Here
Other notices:
Advent Reading Groups: During advent we will be running three parallel reading groups on John Behr’s book Becoming Human: Meditations on Christian Anthropology in Word and Image. The first group meets via Zoom on Wednesdays at 8pm; the second group meets in Benet’s Café on Sundays at 9.30am; and the third group meets in St Edward’s on Sundays at 12.30pm. We warmly encourage you to join a group for advent and hope that the range of formats will accommodate everyone who wishes to do so. The next three chapters (4-6) are accessible here and the study questions for the course of advent are accessible here.
Volunteer Rota: In addition to the sign-up sheet in church, we are making it easier to volunteer by attaching an online rota with the weekly email here. (N.B. There will be an initial delay before access is granted to the form, in order that only church members can see and edit it.) Please do consider if you are able to help out in any of the ways listed – we are particularly in need of regular volunteers to set-up tea and coffee and stay a little longer after each service to wash-up/leave away. Many thanks!
Giving: As always we are grateful for all of your gifts! Offerings may still be given during this time via a basket collection during live services, Standing Orders, or one time bank transfer, via BACS (Sort Code: 20-17-19 / Account Number: 30851477 / Account Name: St Edwards Church). There is now also a SumUp machine by the door of the church, for those of you who wish to give contactlessly: Simply power on, enter the amount you wish to give on the screen, and then tap your card.
Exciting Holiness (Wednesday 4 December):
Born in London in 1592, Nicholas Ferrar was educated at Clare Hall (now Clare College), Cambridge, and elected a fellow there in 1610. From 1613, he travelled on the continent for five years, and on his return worked with the Virginia Company, and was briefly elected to parliament. In 1625, he moved to Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, where he was joined by his brother and sister and their families and by his mother. They established together a community life of prayer, using the Book of Common Prayer, and a life of charitable works in the locality. He was ordained to the diaconate by William Laud the year after they arrived. He wrote to his niece in 1631, ‘I purpose and hope by God’s grace to be to you not as a master but as a partner and fellow student.’ This indicates the depth and feeling of the community life Nicholas and his family strove to maintain. Despite difficulties with the Puritans, who were suspicious and referred to them as the ‘Arminian Nunnery’, the community continued after the death of Nicholas on this day in 1637, until his brother John and sister Susanna died twenty years later. The memory of Nicholas Ferrar and his family has continued to inspire Christians to lives of prayer, service and community.
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility; that on the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
